This text is focused on the presentation of jihad in Czech newspapers over the course of
10 years after September 11th, 2001 in three periods – the first period runs from September
11th, 2001 to September 11th, 2002, followed by the years 2006–2007 and 2010–2011.
The main aim of this work is to compare two different political journals (Lidové Noviny
and Právo) and find out if there are some similarities or differences in constructing representations
of Islam through the term jihad. This has been done in two steps. In the first
step, the term jihad is analyzed throughout the articles. In the second step, two different
theories (clash of civilization and multiculturalism), which might be implicitly involved in
media discourse, are used for further analysis of these articles. The methodology combines
two approaches – qualitative and quantitative content analyses. Eight different frames
of jihad are defined through qualitative analysis: (1) duty, (2) defence/revenge, (3)
holy war, (4) undefined, (5) jihad of sword, (6) “self-improvement”, (7) semantic shift of
jihad and (8) global jihad. The most interesting is the seventh category, which uses the
term out of its religious meaning, as synonymous with a fight, chaos, aggression etc. Furthermore,
this work will show that left-wing and right-wing journals don’t fulfill the expectations corresponding to their political rhetoric. Articles from left-wing journals
contain much more signs of the clash of civilization than they do of multiculturalism.
Thus, the main result is that the political dichotomy between the right-wing and left-wing
is disappearing in the Czech Republic.